It is known that supermarkets have always been places in which little thefts can be made quite easily. In fact, in supermarkets goods of little size can be acquired, which become easy to hide inside pockets or the clothes themselves because of their size.
Where phenomena of economic crises became burdensome, important increases of thefts in supermarkets have been reported and, more in general, in all shops of the Mass Merchandise Channel; although the entity of every single theft is not relevant, in itself, on supermarket budget, particularly if of great size, however the sum of these little thefts can cause, during the month, also relevant decreases of sales, about 10% or more. The Applicant found that a lot of thefts just concern deep-frozen products or anyway intended to be kept in refrigerated cabinets. Therefore, if the most shoplifted goods have to be profiled, those associated with the cold chain have a role higher than others.
Over the years different system types have been invented for preventing thefts, which can also be installed on goods intended to be sold in supermarkets. These systems of the known art comprise, for example, RFID tags included on/in the packaging, for example of Compact Discs or DVDs, the tags causing the activation of an alarm in case of passing by a sensor preferably placed at a cash desk.
RFID tags are inappropriate for the installation on fruits or vegetables, or deep-frozen food packagings, for example, just because on the one hand they have to be positioned on a flat surface, on the other hand the cold could damage their performances. The cost itself of each RFID tag, being high, can be accepted only where it is associated with high value goods, such as for example electronic devices.
Another technique dissuading from thefts is the use of guards at the supermarket exits, which are authorized—if allowed by law—to make body search on persons considered susceptible to have stolen goods. However, also this system suffers from some drawbacks: from one hand subjecting a customer to a body search is embarrassing and could become cause of loss of other customers that—although honest—do not want to be subjected to such a body search type. Secondly, subjecting one or more customers to body search can not be systematic: in other words, it is not possible nor sensible to subject all customers to body search, as this might cause long lines at supermarket exits, particularly in peak time; moreover, this could be not a minor cost for a supermarket, since the presence of only one guard would unlikely be sufficient to face the need of a sufficiently thorough inspection of consumers, for a little supermarket, also in case of normal flood of customers.
Therefore, the Applicant found that systems for preventing thefts, in supermarkets, are not completely effective.
Therefore, with the present invention, the Applicant set itself the purpose to describe a system and a method for detecting thefts inside shops suitable to sell cold products, which allows the afore described drawbacks to be solved.